By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

I hope you appreciate the obstacles I overcame to get this exclusive interview with Deborah Dahl, kindergarten/first-grade teacher at Windward Adventist School in Kailua.

It was recess. We sat outside on a bench so she could keep an eye on the playground. During the first five minutes she prevented a scuffle between two boys playing basketball, listened to a song, promised to fix a pin and talked to the leader of a newly formed girls' club into admitting girls without blue dresses who were angry about being left out.

It's a good thing I didn't come the day before. A girl in kindergarten threw a tantrum because her mother made peanut butter instead of jelly sandwiches. Her mother, a nurse at Castle Medical Center, had a case at the hospital so a friend brought the girl kicking and screaming to class.

Miss Dahl hugged her and the class sang songs. They talked about why they should obey their parents. Then they went to the beach for worship. The next morning the little girl brought Miss Dahl a bouquet of flowers.

Finally, I got to ask Miss Dahl why she teaches. "I had a second-grade teacher I just loved," she said. But her brother, an actor, was directing plays and wanted her to act. He got her a casting call in Hollywood.

However, the director asked her to pose in a bikini and she wouldn't. Her family was angry with her brother about it. That ended her acting ambitions.

So she focused on speech pathology (therapy) in junior college. Her first job was in Watts, Calif., where the riots broke out. There her teaching philosophy was born. All those underprivileged children were geniuses.

A Seventh-day Adventist, she was 50 before she had the courage to apply in Hawai'i. The Kailua school sent her plane fare.

I never knew that anybody could teach history and anatomy in kindergarten. But Miss Dahl lined the kids up in front of a big U.S. map with each state painted a different color. She pointed the tip of a frilly parasol to different states and the kids sang out their names. Then she picked up a list and read off the state capitals. The kids shouted out the states.

Next came the anatomy lesson. Miss Dahl went to a white rocking chair and picked up a skeleton about two feet high. She pointed to the various bones. Her students roared back their names from the top of the skeleton's head to the tip of its toes.

"I can't do that," I muttered.

"My mom can't, either," a little girl whispered confidentially.

I viewed the pictures the children had drawn and got a hug from each one. Don't get the wrong impression. I'm not special. Many famous people have visited the class, including Mayor Jeremy Harris, University of Hawai'i football coach June Jones, 'ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, two Miss Hawai'is and a Miss America.

Anyway, I thought you ought to know about Miss Dahl. If I were in kindergarten, I'd want her to teach it.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.